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admin
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 Posted: 04/30/2010 at 10:33 AM Post subject: First guitar/bass |
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So.. I'm assuming that the first guitar/bass you owned.. was not a Bean. So with that said, what was the first guitar/bass you owned?
For me, it was a Yamaha RGZ (total shredder guitar). Floyd bridge system, pointy, whammy bar. I picked it up in 1989. Didn't know how to tune it, didn't know crap about guitar.. didn't know one chord, but it was a start. (example of RGZ shred : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG_ziCOzprA)
My first guitar that I was able to save up for.. was a Epiphone Les Paul Custom 'black beauty', which is actually a pretty great guitar (bought around 1991ish). I still have that.
The first guitar that I owned.. and really loved everything about it, was a Gibson Les Paul Studio (black/chrome hardware). I said 'was', because I sold it like a jack ass. I would really like to have another Gibson Les Paul some day. This was 1998ish or so.
Then of course... around that time I discovered Travis Beans. After getting my Bean, the Les Paul stayed in the case... and I figured I should sell it. Knew a friend that was wanting one, so sold it to him for a good deal. I heard he wasn't playing it, and I was about to ask to buy it back.. and found out he sold it. Bummer. Our drummer would always say.. "never sell ANYTHING"... and I hear those words loud and clear now. You definitely miss things when you need them again in the future.
Wow.. post was longer than I expected it to be. So what's your story?
h
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Chelsea
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Posts: 22
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| Posted: 04/30/2010 at 3:36 PM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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This is a great thread!
My first bass, which I got for Christmas when I was 12 (2001), was a black P-Bass style Silvertone as part of a starter kit. When I was 13, and decided that I wanted to play in the concert band in high school, my dad bought me the apple of my eye at that point, a candy apple red Fender Deluxe Series P-Bass Special for $500... under certain conditions, of course! For every chore I did for him, like vacuuming out his truck, mowing the lawn, dusting all the surfaces in the house, weeding the gardens, mopping the hardwood floors, etc. he would take 50 cents off the price of the bass until I payed the whole thing off! I don't play it much anymore, but I don't ever see myself getting rid of it, because at that age, I felt like I had never worked harder for anything!
My grandpa built me my first upright bass (out of a bunch of busted basses he bought at a junk auction) when I was 12, too... He's an ******* and that's one of the few thoughtful things he'd ever done for anyone, so I would NEVER get rid of it!
My first guitar, which I bought this past year at age 20, was a 1962 Norma student guitar with a wild whammy bar! I love it, but I'm in the market for a more player-friendly axe.
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Ezra
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| Posted: 04/30/2010 at 7:22 PM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Mine was a 70's Fender Mustang, bought it from a friend, pickups were weak at best and the thing wouldn't stay in tune, but it was a good start. Upgraded to a LP Studio, that was good guitar for the money. Then I got restless and got an SG classic, P-90's were cool but it had a couple dead spots on the neck that I couldn't get over. Sold or traded everything, only have TB's now, no regrets though, I really don't miss having a wood neck guitar.
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1uncertain3
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 9:14 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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There has been some really great threads as of late!
My first guitar was a Ibanez lawsuit Les Paul, which my mother had purchased for me. Basically it was the same story Hank told: I didn't know crap about guitars let alone tuning, but I didn't care - I was 17 and really into punk rock, so tuning and tone wasn't of much concern to me. I played that guitar religiously for about 10 years until I was able to afford my next guitar, which was a Gibson Les Paul Catalina. Somewhere around 2006 I had seen Sunn play and noticed that Stephen O'Malley was using a "strange" looking guitar with a "T" cut out in the headstock; I searched high and lower for this guitar and that is how I found this site!
Hank: I really dig both the Black Beauty and the black/chrome LP that you mentioned. Actually, I was searching for that exact same LP but decide against it. I do love the way that guitar looks though...
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admin
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 9:28 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Jay.. yeah. I do like the look of those black LPs for sure.
Ezra.. I hear you about wood necks. Man.. all I play are Beans or EGC, but there is a certain bit of nostalgia with the Les Paul for me. Like to get another one some day. I probably won't play it much, but I definitely feel attached to them.
A couple of years ago, I was really obsessed with Earthless (still am.. sorta) and loved the plexi tone with strat (delay/wah).. psychedelia stoner rock. It's a guilty listening pleasure for me. So I bought a nice American Fender Strat.. tobacco burst, rosewood fingerboard (maple freaks me out for some reason). It's a nice guitar. Sounds good. But I absolutely hate that thing.. not quite sure why. Could be the single coils, could be the neck, could be the weight. I do like the neck pickup tone though.. classic strat, but every other tone is weak.
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admin
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 9:30 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Chelsea ... cool story.. but you officially made me feel like I'm 106 years old. How does that upright bass sound? Can't imagine building something like that.. crazy!
h
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Chelsea
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Posts: 22
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 9:45 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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The upright is a story in itself--- when my grandpa gave me the finished product, the neck he used had been covered with a million coats of glossy black paint, and there are a few huge chips missing, making it not-so-smooth, but that really doesn't bother me. The front and sides of the body he used for the project had been painted baby-poo-green with a coarse paint brush... possibly the most unsightly instrument I'd ever seen. My mom had always been into buying retro furniture at garage sales and thrift stores and refinishing the pieces to make them look like a million bucks, so she helped me out with this project. It takes a whole lot to embarrass me, but my ma knew that I didn't want to be seen playing it in the string ensemble because it was so gnarly. We stripped the paint off with citrus stripper and stained it a deep cherry. I've gotten a lot of compliments on the tone and appearance of it over the years, even from a gentleman who paid $60,000 for a custom carved Czech upright! Little did he know that the strings on my instrument cost more than the $100 piece of garbage itself. Definitely holding on to it forever!
Sidenote: the reason my grandfather, an upright bassist, built this for me was because he accidentally cut off two of the fingers on his left hand with a table saw and wanted someone to "continue his legacy"... so cocky.
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1uncertain3
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 9:54 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Chelsea, may we see before and after pictures? You've peak my curiosity!
Thanks,
Jay
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Chelsea
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 10:41 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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I really wish I had before photos, because words cannot describe how awful the green monster really was. Here are some photos from last year, the best I can do!
There she is!
http://img576.imageshack.us/i/dsc0008e.jpg/
The finish looks a little weak from the camera flash, but in natural light, it's nice and rich!
http://img580.imageshack....../img580/6048/dsc0004a.jpg
Here is the fingerboard, which had also been painted at some point... obviously it didn't last too long.
http://img146.imageshack.us/i/dsc0007jo.jpg/
Some of the chunks missing from the thick, cracked, paint layers on the neck.
http://img690.imageshack......img690/9246/dsc0006pp.jpg
This thread gave me a memorable flashback: at my first bass recital, my dad brought my upright in the back of his pickup truck and had retracted the endpin so it would fit in the canvas bag. When we got to the recital, the endpin was STUCK inside of the bass... we tried everything from the hand lotion in my mom's purse to the soap from the bathroom to try to get it to loosen up, but no luck. I played that recital with the bass resting on a phone book because nobody could pull the endpin out! For Christmas that year, my bass teacher bought me a new endpin and a can of WD-40.
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1uncertain3
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| Posted: 05/01/2010 at 11:00 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Chelsea,
Thanks for the photos...it is truly amazing that your grandfather made this...it is a stunning example of craftsmanship.
BTW, that is a pretty funny story about the endpin!
Jay
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Bastin
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| Posted: 05/03/2010 at 10:47 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Great topic.
Because how many of you have ever recaptured the thrill of that moment?
A little off topic, but I remember the first "real" amp that I got was a Carvin. I ordered it from the catalog and had to wait, it came in a big box, it was there when I got home from school. It might as well have been the only piece of gear in the world. There are still some residual feelings of excitement when I see a UPS truck, all from that one event.
I was young and that was fun. I'm still chasing it.
My first guitar was a Les Paul Studio.
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admin
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| Posted: 05/03/2010 at 10:54 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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I love the UPS truck.. followed by the FedEx truck
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theNewTerritories
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| Posted: 05/03/2010 at 11:48 AM Post subject: RE:First guitar/bass |
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Before I owned my first guitar, a close friend of mine lent me a guitar he had built himself, so that I could learn how to play.
It was a blue stratish style body and it had two humbuckers and a Floyd rose system installed. The headstock was upside down. I called it the DVB custom, as a joke (those were his initials).
He let me hang on to that guitar for months, and I played it as often as I could. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I'll never forget the feeling of those early days. I was 16 at the time and I always get quite nostalgic when I see a guitar that colour blue. (which isn't often)
I heard a few years later that he had lent it to someone else, who for some idiotic and unknown reason, had drilled an enormous hole through the body.
This same friend later sold to me the first guitar I ever owned. He had just bought a new guitar for himself, a white Gibson explorer and decided to sell me (for very cheap) an old sunburst Hagstrom II that he owned. What made this guitar interesting was that it had switches, some of which he had replaced himself with bizarre lamp-style switches because the old ones had rotted and crumbled away.
I will never forget the first time I plugged it in- the tone was incredibly harsh and trebly, but at that time I loved that sound. The guitar had a mute switch which I used as a kill switch- I am not sure if he had re-wired it incorrectly- but this mute switch killed all the pickups- so you could play with all the pickups on and then mute them both at the same time-
an effect that I exploited quite intensely. At that time I was in hardcore and noise bands- although I didn't play guitar in those bands, I put that guitar through some serious abuse.
In fact, at one point it went dead- couldn't get any sound out of it, so I brought it back to my friend and he re-wired it for me.
I still have it today- I could never sell it. I really owe a lot to that old friend of mine - he got me interested in playing guitars and made it possible for me to do so.
The second guitar I bought was a blue Ibanez Jetking JTK1.
I later gave this guitar away (it was damaged, I abused that guitar quite badly) after buying a Kramer XKG-10 in a guitar store.
My first aluminum-neck, after hearing a Travis Bean in Fly Pan Am I knew that I wanted an aluminum neck guitar, at the time a Travis Bean seemed out of my reach, it was the first aluminum-neck guitar I encountered in a guitar store- it was also reasonably cheap, nobody wanted it and it at hung up there for quite a while!.
It is their version of a flying V and I will admit that it is quite an ugly guitar, whenever I played it out people would always have rather negative comments concerning its appearance but I could never sell it because the day I first encountered it and bought a very significant event occurred in my life and now the two are forever bonded in my mind. It is also a rather fun guitar to play, haha.
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